LONDON: Multimedia campaigns typically result in higher response rates among consumers in the UK than alternatives concentrating on single channels, a new study has found.

Research from ITV, the broadcaster, and the Direct Marketing Association, reported that response rates improved by 143% when these two platforms were used together.

Data Talk surveyed a panel of 3,000 people, and found that this figure stood at 175% when television and online were employed in tandem, and fell to 52% for a combination of TV and press.

More broadly, television was still regarded as being the "most acceptable" marketing tool among the British public, with an approval rating that was one third higher than that for any other channel.

Robert Keitch, chief of membership and brand at the DMA, said there was a need for a "shift in the way advertisers think about the relationship between direct and mass marketing media."

Separately, analysis commissioned by the Radio Advertising Bureau, the industry body, showed that ads run via this medium led to a 52% uptick in consumers browsing for featured brands on the web.

Dollywagon Media Science and Other Lines of Enquiry assessed the online behaviour of shoppers in response to 23 radio campaigns from the telecoms, auto, insurance and high street retail categories.

It compared the activity of 1,200 people that had heard these ads with 600 people who had not, and discovered that 34% of "brand browsing" on the net was attributable to radio.

Furthermore, in 58% of cases, participants who looked for specific products in this way did so within 24 hours of having listened to a specific commercial.

Simon Redican, managing director of the RAB, argued "the internet has become an incredibly important interface for customer marketing but the problem is that it also allows access to all your rival's brands."

"Marketers are increasingly turning to offline media to direct consumers to their brands online."

Data sourced from Marketing Magazine/Marketing Week; additional content by Warc staff